The Green Travel Guru

Sustainability champion and founder of Gap Adventures, Bruce Poon Tip, says Middle East travellers want a new way to see the world, and he’s here to show them how

When it comes to the types of holiday most commonly favoured by Middle Eastern travellers, travel agents would probably put shopping breaks, or luxury spa resorts at the top of the list.

But Bruce Poon Tip sees a whole “untapped” market of travellers in the region looking to see the world in a more eco-friendly fashion and experience an ‘off-the-beaten’ track adventure, which he is keen to capitalise on.

Poon Tip is the founder and CEO of Gap Adventures – the world’s biggest adventure travel company. He started his company in 1990 aged 23 after returning from a backpacking tour of Asia, on a mission to offer authentic adventures in a sustainable manner. Since then his one-man band has grown to employ 850 people worldwide, offering adventure trips from safaris, jungle treks and cultural experiences in every continent of the world. Over 100,000 people will travel with Gap Adventures this year. Last month he announced a deal with MMI Travel to distribute his travel products to customers in the Middle East for the first time.

“There’s definitely a huge demand here,” he says. “There’s a whole new younger generation here that’s looking to travel, and is curious about seeing the world in a very different light. They want to experience culture as oppose to just resorts or shopping.”

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Travel agents will be crucial to selling the Gap Adventures product, and Poon Tip says educating the trade is the next step to ensure that consumers get the right message about the various tours on offer.

“With our programmes it needs a travel agent to sell it that can talk to the customers. It’s an emerging market here so there’s a lot of education needed. Initially we need to get out on the road and talk to all the sellers of travel, so that when someone walks into a travel agency and they want to do something different – if they want to go and see the Galapagos Islands, or see Machu Pichu they can have access to that.”

While the expat market is already to some extent familiar with the Gap Adventures product, Poon Tip says his mission is to get the local Middle East traveller on board with “a more sustainable form of travel.”

It might be a tougher market to capture, but he believes that the ‘group travel’ aspect of his adventure tours will appeal to the local market .

“People from this region are curious to travel with other people from around the world. They are very interested in the groups themselves as oppose the actual destinations. They are interested in the fact that we have people from Norway, Australia, New Zealand and Canada all on our tours and the destination is almost secondary because they are very keen to be with a group of people from around the world.”

He adds: “The idea that they can join a group of travellers in a safe environment and do an African safari, or a train trip across Vietnam is exciting for this generation of people. And we love having them on our groups too because they are so new to travel and they are so excited to see the world in a way that’s sustainable and active and adventurous.”

As well as the ‘adventurous’ aspect of his tours, Poon Tip is also something of a green tourism pioneer and he has received countless awards for his efforts in promoting sustainable travel.